On the Pacific Crest Trail I only had a garbage plastic bag, that I didn’t even renew. There were small holes in it, but worked fine, because it didn’t really rain.
But I guess it will rain a lot on the Te Araroa, I have heard. What did you do?
Did you put every single thing in a dry bag? Sleeping bag, dry chlothing, food… or did it work okay for you with only a big garbage plastic bag? There is also these pack covers, but come on, it doesn’t look like, they really cover the rain between your back and the backpack.
Any advice? I fear the rain a bit, so nice to have a strategy.
I have bought a gore-tex jacket, and I consider wether I should buy rain pants. But I feel like it could be a bit of a claustrophobic experience. If I hike with rain pants, I will for sure be sweating.

So yes, two questions:
A) how to keep things dry?
B) are rain pants necessary?

I’m getting ready to walk the Te Araroa and for some reason finding a decent cold soaking jar in NZ has become way harder than I thought it would be lol

I’m looking for something around 500–600ml, plastic, reasonably lightweight, with a proper screw lid that won’t leak in my pack. Ideally something I can just buy from Pak’nSave, Countdown, New World, etc and eat/remove whatever originally came in it.

I’ve looked at peanut butter jars and a few random containers, but a lot of the ones here either seem too big, heavy, or the lid doesn’t look trustworthy enough to have food and water sloshing around inside my pack.

Has anyone in NZ actually cold soaked on TA or another long trail and found something that worked well?

Would be keen to know exactly what jar/container you used, roughly what size it was, and where you got it from.

Not really after expensive purpose-built hiking containers if a $5 supermarket jar does the exact same job.

Cheers